Walking Each Other Home

This story is about a famous Christian theologian who had recently gone through a much-publicized divorce. He was walking on a crowded street in Manhattan when he looked up and saw Abraham Joshua Heschel, the Jewish mystic and activist, coming toward him.

Heschel immediately changed directions, threw his arm around the theologian's shoulders, and, as they walked side by side, said to him, "I must tell you of my great grandfather, the most famous Rabbi in Eastern Europe. He too was divorced."

The theologian began to weep silently.

Transitions are difficult times. Even the scheduled transitions from childhood to adolescence to young adulthood, to middle age, to old age (and all the stops in-between) can be rocky going. But when traumatic transitions happen, when we lose a relationship, a job, our wealth, our health, our stature in the eyes of others, we need companionship.

These transitions are English Channel crossings and while we fights waves, we need friends in an accompanying boat. And not just any friends, we need wise friends.

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